Abstract
Dead organic matter is important in carbon (C) sequestration because it accounts for a significant proportion of forest C storage. As thinning could alter the C storage of dead organic matter, this study aimed to assess the effect of thinning on the C storage of dead organic matter including the forest floor, mineral soil at a depth of 0-30 cm, and coarse woody debris in larch and oak forests in South Korea. Differing intensities of thinning were applied to four larch and four oak stands, and the C storage of dead organic matter in thinned and control plots was compared three years after thinning. The effect sizes were estimated based on Hedges’ d to measure the influence of thinning. Total C storage of dead organic matter tended to be higher in the thinned plots (larch: 82.45 Mg C ha-1 and oak: 82.56 Mg C ha-1) than in the control plots (larch: 72.07 Mg C ha-1 and oak: 74.79 Mg C ha-1). However, estimation of effect size found that the cumulative effect size was not significant for the C storage of the forest floor, mineral soil, coarse woody debris, and dead organic matter. Only a few of the individual treatments exhibited significant effect sizes for mineral soil C storage in two larch stands and coarse woody debris C storage in two oak stands. The results indicated that the applied thinning treatments might have no consistently significant impact on the C storage of dead organic matter in the larch and oak stands after three years, though thinning may have had an idiosyncratic influence on the C storage of dead organic matter in a few of the study stands.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 593-598 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | IForest |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2016 Aug |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© SISEF.
Keywords
- Carbon sequestration
- Dead organic matter
- Effect size
- Forest thinning
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Forestry
- Ecology
- Nature and Landscape Conservation